


Instant Classic

by orphan_account



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Confessions, First Kiss, Introspection, M/M, No Plot/Plotless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 03:44:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16508768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Then…” Unless this has been in Leo’s brain all along, Izumi is still standing in the 1-B classroom. Leo takes a step forward. “What do you want? I could write you a ballad, Sena.” Another step forward. “Or more than one, since you’re so hard to please. I’ll write a million ballads just for you—enough to fill every concert hall on Earth at once, and all the ones in space, too!”Izumi’s eyes are easier to get lost in than either Yumenosaki Academy or Leo’s own mindscape. “What about me is hard to please?”---Leo can't remember why he isn't supposed to tell Izumi he loves him.





	Instant Classic

**Author's Note:**

> This has probably all been done and said before which is what I get for discovering Izuleo 3 years too late but I had fun writing it and I love it and I love them and that's what matters! It's new to ME.

Leo finishes the final eighth note with a curly-motioned swoop like he’s drawing a checkmark, drops the magic marker, and steps back to survey his work.

And fate must be on his side—perhaps as reward for writing such an extraordinary masterpiece—because the door opens a second later.

Really, it’s lucky for whoever it is that they hadn’t entered any sooner. If they’d interrupted Leo, tarnished his concentration so close to completing his latest masterpiece, he’d have knocked their lights out.

Probably.

Maybe.

The room’s lights flicker on, and Leo blinks.

Oh. He’d been working in the dark again. Over the time he’d taken off from school, his room’s light bulb had died like some kind of twisted metaphor. And since fixing it would just waste possible composing time, Leo had resolved himself to reading in the dark. His eyesight adjustment is pretty good, now. Kinda like a cat’s.

It’s cool. Like Leo. Or maybe Leo _is_ part cat, secretly.

His eyes _are_ bright green. And his name _is_ a lion.

“Where am I?” Leo asks. Nowadays—even if it still does when he sings—Leo’s voice no longer feels like someone else’s when he speaks. And it no longer feels weird or gross or like his genius is being ruined when he talks to people, either. And, _and_ , Leo can more or less recognize that that was a ridiculous silly stupid thought to begin with. On most days, anyway. On good ones. But the school had contacted his family after winter break and said that if Leo didn’t start showing up to classes he wouldn’t be able to graduate, and Leo had whined and moaned as he always did about how his teachers were trying to brainwash him and his parents had given up as they always did and said they couldn’t force Leo to do anything, that _they knew that very well by now_ , and Leo had gone to his room.

And then he’d written a funeral march, and then he’d laid on his bed and mulled things over.

And lying upside down, head hanging off his mattress and ponytail hanging behind his head, Leo had realized what being held back _really_ meant.

Rei may have been fine with being held back—“ _another year with my precious Ritsu”_ —but Leo had only just glued his chessboard back together. Leo had only just reassembled all the pieces. Not graduating would mean being left alone just as he’d left the Knights remnants alone back then, which would mean Leo would be a king without his queen.

In a literal sense, _queen_ might fit Arashi better.

But Leo wouldn’t marry Naru.

And so even though even though he doesn’t deserve to graduate, and by all means really probably _shouldn’t,_ and really does kinda deserve to lose his queen, and also kinda has already lost him, Leo had started re-attending classes.

It’d be a waste of his talents not to leave Yumenosaki ever, and Leo too would waste away without his most beloved muse. He sleeps through the classes, of course, or composes instead of taking notes, except he never composes anything worthy since Leo’s teacher’s voices are as droning as the drones they are and most days Leo just wants to shove socks in their mouths so he can concentrate.

But if he does that he’ll be expelled.

So he sleeps instead. At least that way he can use the night hours he would’ve otherwise— _also_ regrettably—needed to sleep to compose melodies about the moon.

“The 1-B classroom,” Izumi answers. “Kasa-kun’s going to kill you.”

Oh, that’s right. He’s in the 1-B classroom. And Izumi is now also in the 1-B classroom. And it’s nighttime, apparently. And he’d just written a song on the 1-B classroom’s walls.

Kasa-kun is the least of his worries, then. _Kunugi-sensei_ might actually kill him if he founds out. But Izumi is also here after hours, and if he’s here with Leo he’ll look complicit in the crime and then Kunugi-sensei will kill Izumi, too.

They’ll be taken down in battle together, side by side.  
  
How romantic.

“I can’t help it!” Leo moans, throwing back his head. “God struck me with the heavenly hand of inspiration while I was walking so I had to come in here and write it down immediately…” And then he looks back forward, and in the fluorescent lighting Leo reads what he’d written in the dark. “Hey, hey,” he muses as he plays the melody in his head, “this is really good! Even though I don’t remember writing most of it! Oh, wait, what am I talking about? Of course it’s good—it was written by me! Or _was_ it…” Leo turns fully around. “Sena, you don’t think an alien possessed me to write this, do you?”

Izumi blinks once. “Ou-sama… when’s the last time you slept?”

It’s a good question. Really insightful. Really caring. Izumi has obviously taken note of Leo’s current state, compared it to times when he’s been like this before, and deduced he’s sleep-deprived.

That means he’s been paying attention to Leo.

Good. Good good.

Leo frowns. “Tuesday, maybe? Or… Wednesday? But that wasn’t really sleep, I just took a little nap ‘cuz the rain sounded so nice. Like, it’s raining, it’s pouring, you know? Oh, but don’t worry, I didn’t bump my head or anything.”

Izumi looks at Leo like he has bumped his head. But then again, that’s the way Izumi always looks at him.

It makes Leo’s heart hurt in places he can’t reach without a sword.

Before Izumi can say anything else, Leo takes a few steps forward and puts his hands on Izumi’s hips. They’re instantly shoved away by Izumi’s own, and Izumi takes a hasty step back like he’s tripping over his own feet in a waltz.

Ah, even better. This is the real Izumi Sena for sure.

“What the hell?” Izumi demands. “Why are you touching me so suddenly, and why _there_?!”

“To make sure you’re real,” Leo hums along to the melody he’d just composed.

“And why the hell _wouldn’t_ I be real?” Izumi demands further. All the color has drained from his already-pale face, and he’s sweating the same way he does at the beach.

Leo pauses mid-tune. This is something he shouldn’t be telling Izumi, but he can’t remember _why_ he isn’t supposed to be telling Izumi. He’s kinda sleepy, yet also wide awake, and his brain is so full of music and happiness there’s no room for anxiety or rules.

“Well…” Leo begins, “during the time we were separated, I might’ve hallucinated you a few times. Or a lot of times. Maybe.”

“You _hallucinated_ me?” Izumi draws out, as slow and heavy as a sword from stone.

Leo laughs. “At first I thought you were a messenger of god, you know? Like an angel!” Although, with his steel grey hair and steely blue eyes and cold personality and cold tolerance, Izumi is probably more like a nephilim. Still, even fallen, Izumi is more angelic than a certain demonic _Tenshi._ “But then I realized it was just you.”

Izumi’s steely blue eyes widen. “Just me…” He sighs, shakes his steel-grey-haired head, and then mutters “I really don’t understand you.”

It’s almost spring, but Leo’s body temperature drops to the point he nearly shivers. Where’s the kotatsu when he needs it?

Ah… aha. So Izumi is using the sword he’d drawn to stab Leo. Of course!

It hurts. It really hurts. It really really hurts. It’s painful. Awful. It’s so painful Leo could write a song! It’s wonderful. Pain is wonderful, and inspirational, and that’s why Leo goes through so much of it. What would he be without his inspiration? He’d be nothing! A pitiful, naked king, curled up on a snowy street without a blanket. He’d freeze to death!

That’s right. This is just pain. It’s just pain, and pain is inspiration.

Leo bites his tongue.

It shouldn’t hurt, but it does.

And coming from anyone else, it wouldn’t hurt nearly as much. Leo is all but numb to that kind of thing now—more so than even Izumi is to the cold. But it’s like, immunity maybe, like when someone’s body develops resistance certain poisons or something, or, no no, that isn’t right, it’s all wrong, poison has nothing to do with hearts, this is messing with Leo’s head, Izumi is _in_ Leo’s head because his poison still works, ugh—

What had Rittsu said, once? That all wounds will scab over because they’re human?

He’s right. It’s true. They _are_ all human: not gods or angels or fallen angels or demons or  vampires or whatever else people Leo can’t keep track of think they are. So their wounds scab over, and they heal.

Still, being stabbed in the heart over and over and over and over ought to leave some scars.

And maybe that’s why, once upon a time, aliens had replaced Leo’s heart with cold, hard metal. But Leo is the naked king as well as a valiant knight, so of course he’d fought his hardest and bravest to get it back.

And he’d won.

“What is there to understand?” Leo demands. His lips are betraying him— _just like he’d betrayed everyone_ —turning down into a pout and exposing him for the bratty, childish guy Izumi claims he is. The bratty, childish guy Leo is trying to stop being. “What needs to be understood, huh? Isn’t it enough that two people like being around each other?” He takes another step forward, once more closing the space between them. “Isn’t that enough for you?”

It’s okay if it isn’t enough, though. Leo will explain himself if it’s for Izumi.

Leo will reach out if it’s to smooth the crease between Izumi’s eyebrows so he won’t get wrinkles—like he’s always fretting about, which will _give_ him wrinkles, but even with wrinkles Izumi will still be cute—and he’ll even sing a lullaby if it’s to help Izumi sleep.

He’ll do better, work harder, fly higher, compose more.

It’s okay if it isn’t enough. It’s okay if it won’t ever be. If he has to, Leo will become Atlas the Titan and bear the burden on Izumi’s heart himself.

Izumi sighs. “I guess that is the kind of thing you’d hear from someone who hardly remembers people’s names, isn’t it?”

Leo’s lips worsen their betrayal by pouting even further. “I may be a _genius_ ,” he tells Izumi, “but there’s only so much room in my brain. If I use too much of it for names and stuff, there won’t be any room for music!”

He’s tried to wrap his mind around it as many times as he’s tried wrapping his classmates in rope, but Leo just can’t figure out why names are important. They’re just titles, aren’t they? Just titles, given to children by parents or family members.

Just titles: ways to reference people by.

And maybe if someone chose their own title, Leo would put more effort into remembering it. Because that’d mean they didn’t like the title they were given, and if he called them by it he’d upset them. Like with Madara. He likes being called Mama, so Leo can remember that easily. Otherwise, as far as his eyes can see, there isn’t any point. As long as people know who he’s talking about, or who he’s talking to, it’s fine! People know who Leo means by _newbie_ , the same way people know who newbie means by _leader_. And people know they’re being talked to if Leo addresses them, or if Leo says _you_.

Really, as long as people understands who he means, names aren’t important.

And even if they can’t understand, that hardly differs from any other conversation Leo has with anyone daily.

He can make use of that, though. He can claim strangers he’d encountered were aliens without anyone questioning his state of mind.

Izumi does question him. “Is that why…” he starts before cutting himself off with a tongue click. “You know what? Never mind. With all these questions, I’m starting to sound like you.”

Leo puts his hands on his own hips. “Is that a bad thing?”  
  
Izumi rolls his eyes. “Definitely, you childish king.”

“Of course you’d say that, you—”

“If you call me a tsundere again,” Izumi warns, and their foreheads are suddenly very very close. Close enough Leo can feel the cold from Izumi’s icy eyes, and it’s scary. Cute. Scary-cute. “You won’t leave here alive.”

Oho. So maybe it isn’t Kunugi he needs to worry about after all. Maybe it’s Izumi himself. Maybe Leo will be killed in a coup rather than dying beside his queen, huh?

Izumi doesn’t really need to stage a coup, though. He knows he’s more than welcome to Leo’s throne.

But really, dying beside Izumi, dying at Izumi’s hands, life, death, it’s all great! All just wondrous, wondrous inspiration.

Some of the best songs are about death, after all. Or composed from grief.

Leo’s whole body buzzes with energy, and he dances backward.

Do other people feel more awake when they don’t sleep?

Wait. Wait. What had Leo been thinking about, again? What had this conversation started with, again?

Leo allows his mind to reach.

Oh. Right.

Hallucination-Izumi.

“How about I call you _Izumi-kun_ , then?” he offers. “Oh, or would just _Izumi_ be better?”  
  
Izumi’s face flushes a very inspirational shade of red. “What’s gotten into you? Are you feverish, Ou-sama?” Even though Izumi is the one who looks feverish, here. “You can’t just—”

But saying the words has tugged at something in Leo’s mind, so he puts up a hand. “Oh, oh, wait, wait hold on just a second, Izumi! My mind is reaching, it’s reaching, it’s all coming back…”

“ _What’s_ coming back?” Izumi demands.

“Ah!” Even more energy surges through Leo. It’s like when he’s playing chess and suddenly all the moves he needs to win click into place at once: a perfect, foolproof, almost prophetic plan. “That one time! I think I called the shirtless Sena _‘Izumi,’_ too.”

Izumi goes pale once more. “You… you hallucinated me _shirtless_?” His hands are balled into fists, and his whole body seems to faintly tremble. At least he isn’t punching Leo, though.

At least he isn’t running away.

Leo probably sounds like he’s joking. Because right now, it’s not that Izumi doesn’t understand.

“Well,” he corrects himself, “naked, actually. We were both naked. It’s like putting the naked in naked king, wahahaha! I guess even my subconscious is a genius, huh?”

Izumi grits his teeth. “And just why,” he bites out, “were you hallucinating us _naked_ together?”

Leo hums. He’d pull his his hood over his head right now, but the weather’s been warm enough he hasn’t been wearing it. So, he settles for tugging at his ponytail instead. “Uh…” Words aren’t, never have been, and never will be Leo’s forte. Still, he can only think of one way to say this. “Because I love Sena, I guess?”

Izumi’s hair bristles, his spine stiffens, and his hands form claws. Maybe _he’s_ the cat. “You _guess_?” But cats’ meows are cute, and Izumi doesn’t sound cute at at all.

“Yeah,” Leo shoots back, “I _guess_! I’ve never loved anyone before, so how am I supposed to know whether or not this is really that?”

“Ou-sama…” Izumi is quieter than Leo has almost ever heard him. _Almost._ “You say you love _everyone_.”

“Well… yeah,” Leo concedes, because he does love the people he says he does, “but also no,” he retorts, because “not like that. Izumi, listen.” Leo takes a very ineffectively calming deep breath, and Izumi stays as still as he has been. “This is that kind of love where you’d want to do naked things together, I think.” He bites his lip, tugs at his ponytail some more. “Or to put it another way, it’s the kind of love where you’d want to sacrifice every piece on the chessboard just to save your queen. Because the king can technically play alone, but where’s the fun in that?”

If all silences were like this one, all noise would be music.

“You say you love everyone,” Izumi murmurs to break it, and then his voice does the most beautiful crescendo Leo has ever seen or heard. It’s so beautiful Leo has to dig his fingernails into his palm, physically restrain himself from picking up the magic marker again. “How was I supposed to know you meant you loved me _differently_?”

Ugh. Leo is hallucinating again, isn’t he? His vast imagination is the only reason tears would ever corner Izumi’s eyes in this lifetime or their previous one or the next or the one after that.

“Eh? Eh?” Leo demands. Has Izumi been too stubborn to learn anything? And here Leo had thought he’d been paying attention! “Music speaks louder than words, you know! Why else would I have composed all those songs for you?”

The tears are gone now, so they really must have been a figment of Leo’s sleep-deprived mind. Although, not the worst figment it’s ever produced. Not the best, either—nothing on the level of naked Izumi—but not the lowest of the low.

“It’s _actions_ speak louder than words, moron.”

“ _Then_ …” Unless this has been in Leo’s brain all along, Izumi is still standing in the 1-B classroom. Leo takes a step forward. “What do you want? I could write you a ballad, Sena.” Another step forward. “Or more than one, since you’re so hard to please. I’ll write a million ballads just for you—enough to fill every concert hall on Earth at once, and all the ones in space, too!”

Their foreheads are nearly touching again.

Izumi’s eyes are easier to get lost in than either Yumenosaki Academy or Leo’s own mindscape. “What about me is hard to please?” And then he sighs, and then he retracts the statement. “Nevermind.”

And then Izumi looks away, clicks his tongue, looks back, grabs Leo’s tie, leans in, and then Izumi’s tongue is in Leo’s mouth and Izumi’s lips are on Leo’s.

And Leo leans forward, closes his eyes, and returns his hands to Izumi’s waist.

And then he kisses Izumi back.

It isn’t the kind of kiss a queen would give his king, or a king his queen—rather, it’s the kind of kiss you’d give your lover before sending them off to battle.

A final stand; a last embrace.

Wait. No. No. That’s all wrong.

It’s the kind of kiss you’d give your lover who’d _returned_ from it.  

A victory. A celebration.

Maybe Izumi really will kill Leo later—he _certainly_ will if Leo mentions this to anyone else—or maybe Kunugi really will kill them both—doubly so if he catches them making out.

And maybe Leo really _is_ hallucinating again. He can’t be sure he isn’t—not wholly, anyway—but back in his bedroom, shirtless Izumi hadn’t felt like this. Naked Izumi hadn’t felt like this. Beethoven and Mozart don’t feel like this, either, when they lecture him.

Izumi’s mouth is the exact warmth Leo always craves, and Izumi’s hips are solid flesh underneath Leo’s fingertips. Izumi feels real, so he must be, and he tastes real, too. Like green tea and cinnamon.

Delicious.

And behind it all, there’s something salty and flowing like desperation. The salt might mean something else, though, and Leo should remember _what_ but he can’t because desperation is the most labyrinth-like maze of all and he’s not finding his way out any time soon.

If ever.

Izumi is the first to pull back, and “have you ever kissed anyone before?” is the first thing he pants. Leo shakes his head, and Izumi laughs out “I could tell. You suck,” all breathless.

“Rude!” Leo gasps. His hands are still on Izumi’s hips, and since they’re a comfortable resting place and warm and solid and Izumi hasn’t stepped back he keeps them there. “Have _you_ even kissed anyone before? Because I’m pretty sure you sucked, too.”

Izumi looks away. “One person,” he confesses when he looks back, and his eyebrows are knit together like the gloves he’d made Leo. “I have to keep my reputation as both an idol and a model clean, you know.”

Another idol model’s face breaks and enters its way into Leo’s mind, then: blond hair and green eyes and blue glasses. It’s unsightly, really. The kind of face you’d pay money to never see again.

How and _why_ the hell he’s a model is even more mysterious than UFOs.

Leo’s body runs hot, and it’s the itchy, antsy, pants-on-fire kind of heat unlike the freshly brewed tea warmth of their kiss. Like when he’s laid under the kotatsu too long and gets up and runs around the school to burn it off afterward, and then Izumi scolds him after that.

“Was it Yuu-kun?”  
  
“Huh?” Izumi scoffs. “As if.”

His voice rings with honesty befitting of the knight he is, and Leo sighs. “Oh, good! If it was Yuu-kun, I might’ve had to put tape over his lips forever and ever.”

Hand still gripping Leo’s tie, Izumi tugs him forward. “Don’t you _dare_ touch him.”  
  
Leo smirks. “I won’t if you won’t, _Izumi_ ,” he promises, palms pressing into Izumi’s hips.

Only dictators break their promises, so it’s a good thing Leo’s a king.

Why would he even _think_ of touching Yuu-kun, when he could touch Izumi instead?

The color drains from Izumi’s face before it returns all at once, like a regurgitating whirlpool. “I–”

It’s a good metaphor. A really good one. A genius one, in fact! Usable, too. Original. Creative. Just like Leo himself.

The very music its syllables would fit best to surge and sway through Leo’s head all at once: an influx of sound and melody and tune even more instant than cheap ramen. One moment, Leo’s mind is absorbed with the sensations his body is experiencing, and the next he’s left his body behind altogether. It’s as fleeting as a rainbow on a sunny day—and _oh_ , Leo can use that too, can’t he—but Leo grasps the song in its full composition.

Hell yes.

Score.

And a pun on top of that!

So before Izumi can continue, Leo drops his hands, drops to the floor, picks up the magic marker he’d dropped earlier, and begins to write. He needs to put down the notes and lyrics right now, right this minute, before the moment fades and before the colors dull.

Before he forgets.

But where should the part about the rainbow go… maybe something about how it looks off the whirlpool’s water? But that’d mean it has to be day, and there needs to be something about the moon, too, and it’s spring, it has to be spring, and why oh why can’t Leo’s hand write any faster than it is right now god dammit!

“The inspiration… it’s flowing! Like a whirlpool, no… like a waterhole! You like those, Izumi, don’t you?”

Some noise buzzes in the background, but Leo tunes it out.

Before it dies, their kiss needs to be immortalized as music.

**Author's Note:**

> Because only Leo would write a song about his first kiss. 
> 
>  
> 
> [i'm on twitter](http://twitter.com/pulsatrixships)


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